The Nagoya District Court on Monday sentenced a former teacher of an elementary school in Yokohama to eight years in prison for sharing illicit voyeuristic images of schoolchildren in a private online chat group of teachers.
According to indictment documents, Fumiya Kosemura, 38, secretly photographed girls in underwear at an elementary school in Yokohama between February 2024 and June last year and shared the images in the chat group. He also shot videos of himself committing indecent acts with one of them and produced child sexual abuse images.
Presiding Judge Motoi Ebihara said Kosemura secretly took photos of 16 children a total of 18 times at the school where he worked, adding, ¡°We cannot overlook how that will affect their physical and mental development in the future.¡±
The defense had asked for a lenient judgment, saying the defendant had been diagnosed with a paraphilic disorder and has been under treatment. But the judge dismissed the claims, saying, ¡°His circumstances don¡¯t warrant him a lower degree of accountability or condemnation against him.¡±
A total of seven teachers from five prefectures ¡ª Hokkaido, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Aichi and Okayama ¡ª have been arrested and indicted in connection with cases involving the chat group. Five of them were found guilty prior to the outcome of Kosemura¡¯s case.
At least 135 children have been identified as victims in the cases, according to the Aichi Prefectural Police.
The group¡¯s existence came to light following the arrest of Shota Suito, 35, a former teacher of an elementary school in Nagoya. Investigators identified Kosemura and others from the location information of the videos.
Earlier this month, the Nagoya District Court sentenced Suito to three years and six months in prison for possessing naked images of girls created using generative artificial intelligence, among other crimes. It was the first time in Japan that the law against child prostitution and pornography was applied to the possession of AI-generated sexual deepfakes.
He also shared with other members of the group videos that he secretly filmed of three girls changing clothes at his elementary school, as well as pouring fluids on a girl¡¯s recorder and school lunch, according to the ruling.
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